Adding Alerts
This article will take you through the process of adding and managing alerts on your various devices on the Polar Portal. Starting with the multiple alert types and guiding us through how to get the users the alerts they need in a timeous manner.
It is important when adding alerts to realize that one does not want to get notifications for every little thing all the time and that alerts are meant to be there to notify when things are not running as they should. Take this in mind when setting alerts as incorrectly setting alerts can lead to false positives and nuisance alerting.
The Polar Platform has a number of different types of alerts. The visable alerts or alerts available are device specific, meaning that not all devices will have the same alerts available and will only have alerts that are relevent to that device type.
Below is a list of the various alert types that will be explained in detail via the heading above.
- Device Offline Alerts
- Device in Fault Alerts
- Max and Min Alerts
- Maintenance Alerts
Alerts Tab
Alerts are specific to the device added to the system. So in order to go and setup the alerts we need to follow these steps:
- Navigate to the specific devices dashboard you wish to setup for alerts.
- Use the tabs on the top of the page to navigate to the “Alerts” tab
Now that we have gotten there your screen will look like the image below.
What we are looking at here is the user interface to setup and manage alerts on the Polar Portal.
There are 2 main windows to focus on here, the first being the left hand window showing alerts and notification settings. It is from this section that we can add new alerts, view and edit alerts that have been added. Then using the “Notifications” tab within this window we can add users to the alert. Click “here” for more information on how to add users to alerts.
It is important to note here that there will be some “default” alert types added depending on the device type being used. For most applications the device offline alert is already added by default.
The second window on the right hand side shows us our last active alerts and trigger events. This list will populate and grow based on the alert triggers and time stamp when the alert triggered and when it was restored.
Adding Alerts
- Now that we understand the fundamentals of the alerts tab we can move onto adding a specific alert to a device.
Before we go further it is important to understand the fundamentals around “Poll Rates” on the Polar Portal. This was explained in the “Device Dashboard” but in short Poll Rates are how often the Polar Portal requests information from the device in the field to store to the Data Base (DB).
To add your appropriate alert follow the following steps:
Click “Add Alert”
Choose “Alert Type”
Give the alert a name in the alert Name section
This name will show up in the alert notification.
Alert Description
This is to better inform you or the user of what the alert is for.
Check Every
This is where the Poll Rate section comes into play, the alert can only look in the DB as fast as the poll rate is. Any faster and there won’t be data to look at. One will notice that depending on the initial poll rate set that there will be limited options for how fast the alert can check for the value.
Data Key
- This is the data tile from the live page that you wish to set the alert to monitor from.
- Note: Only enabled data tiles/data keys will be available on this list.
Aggregation Type
There are 3 different ways that the Polar Portal alerts function. Their descriptions and workings are as follows:
- Average (Default) – This aggregation type uses the aggregated/average value over the lookback period. As an example the average over the last 5 readings in the last 30min have been over the threshold.
This alert is used to perform hysteresis on the data to avoid false positives. - All – This aggregation type triggers only if all values in the look back period are over the threshold. As an example all of the 5 readings in the last 30min have been over the threshold.
This aggregation type is great for systems that have some high inconsistent spikes that are not cause for alarm as they will not effect the trigger threshold. - Live Read – This aggregation type triggers based on a live specific threshold. As an example as soon as the current reading exceeds the threshold the alert will trigger.
This alert is generally used for Boolean values and should be used with caution. As it will trigger every time a threshold is met and every time a threshold is restored. Meaning if there is a value that bounces at the threshold level it will cause multiple triggers over and over again.
Note: This type will also bypass the Poll Rate and lookback period as it is coming live from the device.
NB: It is not recommended to use this alert type for devices in the field with low signal.
Threshold Value
This is the value that must be reached before the alert will trigger.
Lookback Period
This is the length/duration the threshold must be reached before the alert is triggered.
It is important to note here that the lookback period is limited based on a factor of the “Check Every” and the “Poll Rate” values
Trigger Percentage
This is the percentage of values that must be over the threshold of the alert to trigger. For example at 100% all 10 readings over the 30min lookback period must be over the threshold. then at 50%, only 5 of the 10 readings over the 30min lookback period must be over the threshold to trigger.
Restoral Percentage
As with the trigger percentage this is how many of the values should be back into threshold before the alert is restored.
Customize Alert Text
This section lets one override the the pre-generated text for any given alert. There is options here to write custom text for alert triggers and alert restoral in order to make the notifications more user friendly for certain applications.
Note that the number of characters available in these text boxes are limited
Adding Action Triggers
Action triggers will allow you to add an actionable outcome based on an alert to control an output on that device or on another device.
Click (here) for more information about how to add and use the action triggers
Once you have successfully added all your alerts follow the link below to add users to get notifications.